Fabulous uncovering in Glen Iris - and some others from the neighbourhood

This evening I managed to get down to Glen Iris to check out Janet's recent hot tip on an uncovered grocer's sign. I wasn't disappointed - a simple, but brilliantly colourful example.

Lucky that I got down there when I did - the building works have begun and the site was fenced off. Luckily though, the builders helpfully left the scaffolding up, which (just between you and me) allowed me to climb up and over. Plus the light was great.

 Here, also is an example of what the sign would have looked like in its heyday (a 1940 pic in a North Melbourne street, courtesy of Museum Victoria):

And here's an letter from the company (from the Lewis & Skinner site): http://www.lewisandskinner.com/archive/fullsize/1e78d5754638ed8ba322aa91199fd78f.jpg

Now here are the others from the area, also taken today. Firstly, Glen Iris:

Hard to see and snap with no zoom. It advertises the Weekly Times.
On the other side is a sign for the Herald (later they would merge)

A White Crow sign (tomato sauce, made by Swallow and Ariell).
Significant for me because there are loads in the Lewis & Skinner archive.
Now to see if this very sign is in the archive.

Now Ashburton and one from Ashwood:

This and the next neon sign are across the road from each other.
They are both above businesses that are  still what they were (carpet shop and Chinese restaurant)
but under different names.

Lastly, Malvern:

Great sign, just inopportune light and crappy camera.

A ghost as of two days ago - a note on the door says due to unforeseen circumstances,
the new owner won't be continuing the squash centre

Again, good sign but bad light/camera...
you can hardly see it here. It's for Perdriau Balloon Tyres.

...when an uncovering doesn't work. A tantalising glimse of what used to be a sign.

Geoff's Shepparton discoveries

We now have a ghost sign scout in northern Victoria - thanks Geoff! Geoff has already snapped a couple in Shepparton, and is using Facebook to gather local intelligence about other signs in the area :)

News of an uncovering in Glen Iris

For anyone living in that part of Melbourne, a grocer's sign has apparently been uncovered at 12 High Street in Glen Iris (just after the Monash Freeway).

If anyone is going that way, would be great to see what the site has to offer :)

short & sweet piece on the ABC website about my ghost signs interview with Red Symons

http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2013/03/12/3713791.htm

:)

last night's ghost sign seminar

Last night's ghost sign seminar at VU's Flinders Street campus went well  - a great venue, interesting mix of people and great presentations from our guest speakers Stephen Banham and Sam Roberts. Thanks to everyone who made it, to Stephen and Sam for taking part, and for the VU Creative Industries crowd for letting us use the space. Here are a few (bad) iPhone pics I took:

the story in today's paper, hot on the heels of the last post

And yes, they did end up using the pic of me (sigh). But the story turned out well - full kudos to journalist Jill  for getting the essence across in a small word count, despite the heat, the traffic and my constant talking:

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/retrostalgia-hunters-on-the-trail-of-ghost-signs-faded-in-time-20130309-2fsr4.html

A ghost sign tour on a hot afternoon with the odd couple

Yesterday afternoon I took a journalist and cameraman from a Sunday paper on a hastily-arranged, whistle-stop ghost sign tour of North Carlton and Fitzroy. After meeting up at the newspaper's city offices, we piled into the cameraman's little red VW and almost immediately got caught up in Friday afternoon traffic, slowly melting as we inched our way there on clogged roads (there's been an extended heatwave in Melbourne over the last weeks). The journalist and cameraman knew each other well and bickered like a married couple about which road to go on and who was feeling grumpier. It was all quite amusing and surreal, especially when the cameraman took a call in Parkville and announced he had to pull over and send some pics in a hurry to the office. While he sat on the pavement and pored over his laptop, the journalist and I made conversation as we sweated in the car.

In the end the tour itself went quite well, given the short timeframe to think about a one-hour route that would pull together a selection of a dozen or so signs. I was lucky that the Indian Root Pills sign had been uncovered in the area this week (see previous post). We went there first, and then on to a selection of other local signs. In the end the tour took two hours all up, ending up at a North Carlton French bakery, an former grocery covered in exposed and preserved ghost signs for food and soap. Here the journalist took her leave and caught the tram home, and the cameraman snapped his last pics for a gallery of ghost signs, after I failed to convince the shop assistants to wave for the camera through the window.

A car is a good environment to discuss topics at length, and I talked quite a lot about ghost signs and what they could mean. It will be interesting to wake up tomorrow morning and see how the story turned out, what angle was taken by the journalist, and how the gallery looks. I hope they don't use the pic they took of me though.